Difficult Neighbour

[MeadowViews]

I live in a semi detatched townhouse, our neighbour has history of being unreasonable. She has sued other neighbours over disputes and comes across as aggressive and defensive.

Current issue: she has let her garden trees and hedges grow the past 15 years and they are now causing damage to our shared fence, it desperately now needs replacing.

Also, we share a residential car park and she has a huge hedge/bush outside her front (so big you can't see her front door anymore) and the way it's positioned, the bush is now scraping the car as you turn into it. It's an awkward angle of an entrance and the bush has encroached on it about 2 or 3 feet.

I'm happy to cut the bush, tidy it up, and pay 100% costs for the fence to get it done, but I'll need her permission of course.

How do I best approach this? What if she says no? I should say, she doesn't live there, it's empty. She used to have different sets of tenants but they never last long because she falls out with them.

Put a new fence up on your side. Leave the of one in situ.

Cut her hedge when she’s not there.

If the hedge/bush is growing into a communal area just cut it. Do you not have a management company overseeing communal areas?

@Laggartha

Put a new fence up on your side. Leave the of one in situ.

Cut her hedge when she’s not there.

Would there be legal consequences for me cutting her hedge back?

You can cut anything that overhangs your land, as long as you don't kill the plant/tree.

Not sure about communal land.

I would have thought it was fine to cut it back as long as you’re only cutting what is overhanging your property or the communal area, and you’re not going on her land to do so. I think you’re supposed to offer the trimmings back...

I would cut back the bush and put the trimmings in her garden. No harm in contacting her about the fence. If she kicks off you won't actually have done anything and you know where you stand.

@MyCatHatesOtherCats

I would have thought it was fine to cut it back as long as you’re only cutting what is overhanging your property or the communal area, and you’re not going on her land to do so. I think you’re supposed to offer the trimmings back...

In think the offering of the trimmings back goes back to the days when wood was used as a fuel so it would have been considered theft to deprive the neighbour of their fuel

Don't cut her hedge without her knowing. This really wouldn't help matters. Try talking to her first, she might surprise you.
Don't forget nesting season has started and the hedge could be occupied. What sort of hedge is it?

I believe you’re fully entitled to cut back anything that overhangs your land or communal land.

If the hedge is at a level where you can cut it back, I doubt there will be nesting birds in it.

My neighbour at the back has a Leylandii over 100ft tall nest to our shared fence that she hasn’t cut back because she likes the birds.

That end of my garden is covered in pigeon shit and all my shrubs have died. My concrete fence posts are moving because of the roots of the tree. If I could cut it back without it costing me a fortune, I would do it in a heart beat.

Yeah I certainly wouldn’t alert her re the fence or anything else. Cut her bush in cover of darkness provided you’ve checked nothing is nesting in it. You don’t want her starting a dispute with you that you have to declare when you sell.

Would there be legal consequences for me cutting her hedge back?

If she's litigious and she can prove it was you, then possibly. As pp say, just cut it from the communal area and don't go on her property.

Try talking to her first, she might surprise you.

If you feel that this will work, this is obviously the best solution. Personally, given what you've said, I'd just do it before the nesting begins. (I'm too late with my hedge, it's already shaking with sparrows so I'm not going to risk it until the summer).

I would always try speaking to a neighbour first, but conscious this is not always possible. Had a difficult neighbour some years ago so took legal advice on what I could and could not do on boundaries. It is worth doing this, which is free if you have legal expenses cover via your home insurance. The advice was that you can cut anything which overhangs your property back to a border, but you should offer the cuttings back to the owner. Fences were more difficult, and can often be less clear on deeds, but I would start with the deeds. Depending on resources, a separate fence clearly just on your land might be an answer. With concrete posts and a concrete board at the bottom, new panels can be slotted in and out over time which is really useful.

Concrete at the bottom stops hedgehogs from gaining entry for food.

Personally I would trim up the parts that infringe on my side. However with regard to the cuttings, the man whose house backs onto my back garden had loads of large branches cut off my tree which was fine (although he hadn't asked me). The first I knew about it was when I was clearing around the shrubbery in that area and found he'd chucked the branches over my side of the fence therefore meaning I had to get rid of them. That annoyed me!

@Laggartha

Concrete at the bottom stops hedgehogs from gaining entry for food.

Was that to me? If so, we have gaps in one of the side fences that a hedgehog could get through.

And even if we didn’t, if I had to choose between paying for a secure fence and paying for a new fence every time it blows down in the wind, as it used to before I had concrete posts, I know which I’d have.